BOX 1. I HAVE ALWAYS DONE IT THIS WAY! Well, there is probably a “better way” than the way things are done in many area of our lives. If we refuse to shift our habits and thinking, newness cannot come. Change isn’t change until you change. People in this place are saying, “It works! I don’t need to change!” Yet, they toil… unnecessarily because of an inability to take a chance to do something differently.
BOX 2. THIS IS JUST THE WAY I AM. Whatever place we believe we have arrived in our attitude, behaviors and thinking that is good, there is ALWAYS room for improvement. As people, we should always seek to get better and better, climb higher and higher. Why be ordinary, when you can be great? Let us not find a butt-groove in life and pitch a tent there. If ever there was a belief statement that stunts growth – spirituality and naturally, this it it. It says: “I am not teachable. I am not going to try because I like where I am.”
BOX 3. IT WORKS FOR ME! Cycles are not always ineffective but they can be suppressive, ancient and full of unnecessary struggle even though they produce an outcome. If better options exist, why not embrace them and grow differently anyway? When we learn new ways of doing things, we stretch and expand our capacity! We widen our vision or view. We position our LINE OF SIGHT from a different place. Saying it works for me is a BOX that must be destroyed if we really want to learn, grow and change.
BOX 4. THIS IS WHAT I HAVE ALWAYS BELIEVED! And it has limited you! It is okay to shift ones belief in certain areas of our lives. A teacher told me once in college, “If you shift what you believe, you can change the trajectory of your life. Some belief systems have an expiration date if you are going to move forward.” Back then, I had so many negative and limiting beliefs about business and personal success. None of them matched my future.
These boxes are critical blocks to growth and change. Surely, it is nearly impossible to teach, mentor or guide people whose minds have pitched tents in these places.
For me, #2 and #3 have been the worse as I have tried to help people “who asked for help” and they responded like this. I always pull back at that point because they have declared themselves to be “unteachable.”
As we approach a time of goal setting and expectation, I encourage Sons to set goals around destroying, decimating these boxes. Otherwise, all of our goals are being set “inside boxes” unaware…. and completely restrained.
I have learned this: WE ARE CONSTANTLY DESTROYING BOXES if we condition ourselves not to be ordinary. Every new ceiling becomes a floor. Hello Theresa.
Sometimes we are stuck, because we are unteachable – not because we are waiting on our season, trying to get more training or waiting on God. #chamberofthescribe
